as soon as he could, to let them know he was alive.
“Gavin,” she said, her countenance ashen, “there is something I must tell you.”
He noticed her use of his name. And how odd it was, hearing it on her lips. Of recognizing it, of the feeling of belonging that went along with it. He was Gavin Winter, and how right it felt to finally know who he was. To have a name, a past, a memory, a family, a purpose. He had returned to himself.
Thank God.
But Caro…
There was something about her use of his name which rang false. Which seemed inherently wrong. His befuddled mind could not quite place it or make sense of what was happening even as his instincts seemed to. His gut clenched and a cold sweat erupted on his brow. He was hot and cold at once, the room spinning about him.
Hell, he was going to be ill.
“Chamber pot,” he ground out, knowing he did not have much time.
She fetched it for him, pressing the cold porcelain into his hands as the contents of his stomach rebelled.
He heaved into the vessel, misery mingling with the pain in his head. His whole mind felt as if it were falling apart, like a carriage which had gone off a cliff and been smashed to bits.
She took the chamber pot away as his stomach calmed, but in the wake of casting up his accounts, his jumbled mind understood his body’s violent reaction.
He had yet to tell her his name, and she had called him Gavin.
“How did you know my name?” he demanded, fists clenching in the bedclothes as the room continued to swim around him. “I haven’t told you, Caro.”
She blanched, then broke his gaze, glancing down at her nudity before rushing to find her discarded night rail. The one he had removed from her with such profound longing last night.
Last night, when everything had been different.
Last night, when everything had been a bloody fucking lie.
He could not remain in her bed for one moment longer. Not when the devastating blow of realization hit him with the force of any bareknuckle fist. All these weeks of believing her an angel, of allowing himself to fall in love with her…
“How long have you known?” he growled, slipping from the bed, uncaring of his nudity.
He was a wild man now. Needing to know the truth. Sick at the notion of what it would bring, what it would mean. He forgot about his aching head as he found his trousers and angrily jammed his legs into them.
She was flitting about, pacing the small chamber, her bare feet flying over the carpet, her face a study in worry. His butterfly was still flitting, but now he did not find her nearly as entrancing as he once had.
He needed the truth.
She owed him that much.
“Damn it, Caro, say something.” His words were hoarse with torment as he fastened his trousers and stalked toward her, bare-chested. “Speak to me.”
She remained rooted to the spot, watching him with wide, shocked eyes as he stormed to her, stopping near enough that her exotic scent hit him. The scent of betrayal.
“Gavin, please calm yourself. I fear for your health, for your mind. It cannot be good for you to be so angry while you are recovering.”
“Ha!” His laughter was bitter. He wanted to reach for her, wanted to kiss her cruelly. To make her tell him the words he didn’t want to hear but knew he must. “Do not, I beg you, feign concern over me now. You’ll pardon me if I doubt the sincerity.”
“I do care,” she said, reaching for him. “I love you, Gavin.”
He shrugged away from her touch, wanting no part of it. “Don’t speak to me of love. Not until you tell me the truth. How long have you been deceiving me?”
Her lip trembled, her hazel eyes filling with unshed tears. “I have known from the moment Jasper recognized you.”
“And when the hell was that?” he spat, growing weary of playing games with her.
Sutton to the core, this one. How had he ever believed her to be sweet and good and true?
“Before you woke,” she admitted.
He had been expecting the blow. He had suspected. Gavin Winter was not a fool. At least, he had not been one before he had lost his memory. But his memory had returned to him, and with it, his sanity. He would no longer be kept a prisoner by the Suttons. He would have his freedom this day, damn